


The Mistakes We Make

by brightly_brightly



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Crack, Everybody's a nerd, F/F, Fluff, Root is a nerd, Shaw is a nerd, shoot humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4313523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_brightly/pseuds/brightly_brightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unedited snippets of Root being a stalker!nerd and trying to woo Shaw. Also there's some filthy innuendo mixed in so don't read it to your kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mistakes We Make

1.  
Sameen Shaw's first mistake is that she absolutely refuses to find you amusing. When she should be snickering at your jokes, she's scoffing. When she should be eagerly blushing at your innuendos, she's rolling her eyes. When she should be flirting back at your overt come-ons, she's hostile and rejects them. 

She should have known that you never take "no" for an answer. She should have known that you'd win. You always win. Her resistance to your charms only intensifies your desire to make her like you. Harold says things about "finding your choice of pronoun illuminating" and you roll your eyes. The only choice of pronoun in your vocabulary is HER. Her, Shaw, and Her, the Machine. 

2.  
The Machine tells you to work with Shaw. The Machine tells you "no" when you decide to taser her and drug her and ziptie her to a steering wheel. The Machine should really know better by now.

You watch Shaw sleep, slumped over the steering wheel. The rising sun casts golden rays across her firm, toned arms. A little strand of hair sways on the current of her breath. You wonder what it would be like to wake her up by going down on her. It's as creepy as it sounds, staring at her like this. She has these cute, pointy little ears that make you think of her as an angry petite elf. The fact that she would probably loathe this comparison makes it all the more delectable. 

When she awakes, there's the usual second date banter, "why did you drug me" and "you'd better hope i don't decide to kill you" and a knife pressed to your clavicle. Shaw agrees to your mission and the whole thing goes swimmingly. Your forecast for the relationship: eventual sex with an eighty percent chance of bodily harm (to you, from Shaw). 

The hood and zipties, courtesy of the CIA, are simply an added bonus. Shaw's pupils dilate the second you wave them at her. Even from five feet away you can see the little jump in her jugular vein as she licks her bottom lip and darts her gaze back and forth between your face and the zipties, your mouth and the black cotton hood.

You can almost see the code running itself in her head. The adrenaline from fighting that lunking government suit is working in your favor. You can't make the decision for her, so you shrug and wait for her to catch up to you.

When she does, you find yourself ziptied to an uncomfortable CIA issue camp cot. Naked, of course, as she grins and slips the hood over your head. Shaw goes down on you but she doesn't let you come for the longest time. Just when you resign yourself to the fact that she probably isn't going to let you come at all as revenge for the taserings and kidnappings and druggings, she licks the underside of your clit, hard, and slips two fingers into you. You jerk against the restraints and roll your hips so hard into her that the camp bed collapses and you both crash hard onto the floor. You're still coming. She just fucks you harder, mouth hot and fingers relentless.

You might black out slightly. You don't remember.

When she finally lets you loose, you repay the favor several times. You're almost sad when the pick up time approaches and you have to get dressed. You subtly pocket her underwear (yes, it's creepy, ok, you've accepted it- when it comes to Shaw, you're just a big bad creeper). Maybe it's not so subtle. Once the hood is on your face again, just before the knock at the door, she leans down and whispers, "if we ever do this again, I'm gagging you with those panties you thought I didn't see you steal."

There's an exciting rescue and an almost-botched escape. Shaw steps in at the last moment and saves your neck. But then she almost breaks it when she punches you. 

"My jaw was stiff for three days after that mission," you tell her, much later.

She smirks, "so was mine." 

3.

The Machine lectures you on responsibility and ethics and reminds you of Shaw's personality disorder. You ignore Her. She might be a god, but She's never met Shaw. It comes to pass that you join up with Harold's rag tag bunch of do-gooders. You can't say altruism is something you enjoy pairing with your espionage and violence, but if Shaw, who insists left and right that she's a sociopath, but still follows some strict "common good" ethical code, can get on board with it, then you suppose you can play nice too.

There's also the matter of wanting to have sex with Shaw again. You read her file, multiple times, so you saw her test scores and her college and med school reports. So you knew she was brilliant before you even met her. What you learn, in those early months of partnership, is that on top of being brilliant, Sameen Shaw is also a tremendous nerd.

Trying to hide that part of herself from you, it turns out, is her second mistake. Possibly her fatal flaw.

You sneak up on her and John one cold afternoon, determined to divert them from a path that will surely lead them into the grasp of some heavily armed Decima agents. As you are waiting to spring on them, mid-stroll, you hear Shaw make an excited trilling sort of noise she usually reserves for when she thinks she's alone with Bear. You notice her holding John's pistol in front of her, like it's made of gold or something. Her face is awash in goofy excitement and John is honest-to-goodness smiling. Shaw holds the gun in front of her body, miming shooting out the tires of a nearby car. You can just barely hear her adding in sound effects. If that isn't the cutest thing...

Shaw fawns over the pistol a little more before giving it back to John. A few minutes later, it's pointed to your temple as you pin Shaw to the wall with unnecessary force and extremely necessary excess touching. You like to make an entrance. After you've managed to shake the Decima faction, you distract Shaw by pointing at a deli. As she's ducking in to satisfy her hourly meat craving (shut up, don't make that pun), you pull John aside and ask him about his gun like you're considering buying yourself one. 

But guns aren't the only key to unlock Shaw's ultra-nerdy side, you learn. For altruistic reasons, since that's the name of the game now, you have to break into her apartment. As you are placing the brand new nano and a complimentary box of ammo on her nightstand, you notice a stack of magazines on the floor. They're thick and glossy. You grab one, expecting porn. What you find is medical journals. In multiple languages. Copiously annotated (also in multiple languages). Shaw has even drawn little angry faces next to paragraphs she disagrees with (or maybe angry face is universal Shaw for agreement, you can't tell). It gets better, though. Beneath the medical journals, you find a super worn stack of comic books.

Shaw is a bigger nerdling than you! You steal one comic book. You put everything back the way you found it and leave, locking up behind you.

The next time you and Shaw have to stake out a number, you fish the comic out of your satchel and pretend to be engrossed in it.

When she finally tears her eyes away from the number's building, Shaw doesn't even look at you. She just pulls out her pistol and starts maniacally polishing the barrel. 

"New toy, Sameen?"

"Yeah," she says, "John gave it to me." 

You think you might be choking on your tongue because you find yourself sputtering.

"Yep," she continues slowly, casually, like she's not totally lying, "he broke into my loft and left it by my bed, with ammo, too. Isn't he great?" 

You search deep within yourself and find your dignity. It's under a pile of very filthy thoughts.

"Good old helper monkey. Was that all he gave you when he violated your space? Because you know, if it had been me-"

"If it had been you, I would have strangled you because you're not allowed in my apartment."

She snatches the comic book away from you. "And stop pretending you know anything about the Buffy graphic novels."

You stare out the windscreen for a long moment.

"So, Shaw, what's the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?"

4.

Laying low is hard, when you all have to split up and go into hiding. But secrecy does wonders for your sex life. Every time you surprise Shaw at work, she gets so annoyed that she has no choice but to follow you into a fitting room or a bathroom stall or a closet and remind you forcefully several times of how much she doesn't want to see you. Every time you sneak into her apartment, she is so overcome with concern for her cover identity that you both have to spend the entire visit in her windowless bedroom, for fear of being seen. The lack of windows makes the room hot, so you usually end up naked. And what with Shaw's proclivity for sleepwalking, you really have to restrain her. It's for the mission. 

You encourage to take an interest in her cover work, as best you can.

"Root." Shaw blows out an exasperated puff of breath as yet another one of her lipstick samples vanishes into your clutch. "That's not even your shade."

"I'm glad to see you taking your cosmetic education seriously, Sameen," you say, "and while this particular shade doesn't do me any real favors, I'm thinking about the future."

"The future?"

"Yes," You lean in and murmur directly into the shell of Shaw's ear: "think about tonight and how good this will look, smeared on your inner thighs."

Shaw gulps.

"Here," she shoves a fistful of samples at you, "take these too."

5.

You lay on the overt come ons. You take her out on a nice jet stealing adventure. You take her to Miami, where you tie her to a hotel bed and screw her until you are both exhausted. You consider it progress.

Things are smooth and delightful for ages. You both enjoy regular intervals of decidedly irregular sex. You defile the subway, several stolen cars, and countless hotel rooms together. Sameen makes good on her promise to gag you with the stolen panties (you wash them first). Everything is as good as it can be, until she gets kidnapped by Samaritan.

You try to burn the world down and then, when it looks like Shaw is lost, you almost kill yourself (but those are stories for another time) and then, almost anti-climatically, she escapes and comes running back to you. She doesn't literally run. She drives. A car. Right into the side of the subway base. Because the neurologically-fucksy-daisy drugs they'd had her on had left Sameen with some lingering depth/ reality perception challenges.

You sit by her hospital bed for three days. When she wakes up, she glares at you.

"Did you taser me again?" She accuses.

"Not this time. Maybe if you're a good girl I will later."

She groans weakly.

"What happened?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Um. Being in a hospital bed. Greer. Martine. Electroshock.... um, it's kind of blurry."

"You've been a Samaritan prisoner for ten months."

"Oh."

"I killed Martine, by the way. And Greer. I was pathologically violent and now Harold says I'm not going to be allowed in field operations anymore."

She sighs but there's a flicker of light- amusement- something in her eyes.

"What did you do?"

"Snapped Martine's neck. I might have tortured Greer with some very industrial strength power tools for nineteen hours until he told us where you were being held... of course by then you'd already commandeered a jeep and kick-started your own escape. I think I garroted Greer, after that. I forget the details but Reese says it was excessively forceful... and bloody."

"That's messy even for you."

You shake your head. You STILL don't care. It got you one step closer to her: it was worth it.

"They tortured you."

"Yeah. They did..." Shaw shudders a bit, you don't even want to think about what they did to her. 

Shaw reaches over and pokes you sharply.

"I didn't know it was your job to kill everyone who tortures me. You know, you're on that list yourself."

"I get to torture you, I'm your girlfriend."

She sputters. "My what? Since when?"

"Girlfriend, partner, taller half, ball and chain- whatever you want to call it. Since you kissed me at the New York Stock Exchange and then sacrificed yourself for me. That's basically a legally binding contract. And we had witnesses. As such I get full torturing privileges and second dibs on killing and/or maiming anyone who tries to hurt you. Honestly, Sameen, this is all in the manual."

Shaw just stares at you. 

"I think I'm hallucinating."

"No, you're just in a relationship. Don't worry, it's dreamlike for me, too."

"I would never agree to that. I'm a sociopath. I don't do girlfriends or relationships or feelings. Especially not with you." 

"You do now."

"No, I don't" she growls.

"That's your opinion."

"I am not your girlfriend!"

You pat her on the head. She tries to bite you (weakly).

"Look at us, having our first fight. I can't wait for the make up sex. Oh! We also have to have the 'reunited after all this time' sex. And birthday sex because it was your-"

"Root. Stop. This isn't- I can't- You can't just MAKE us be girlfriends."

"Well if I'm not your girlfriend then the thought of someone else kissing me and touching me and handcuffing me to things wouldn't bother you?"

Shaw scowls.

"And you'd be fine with me spiriting off on sexcations upstate with random people? Like to an isolated little cabin in the Berkshires next weekend?"

Shaw double scowls.

"And you wouldn't want dibs on killing or maiming the bad guys who try and kill me?"

Shaw's face might just fold in on itself she's scowling so hard now.

"And you don't get a warm, tingly feeling when I say I want to ziptie you to a chair and have my wicked way with you and only you and none of the other compact Persian sociopaths on my roster?"

"Well. When you put it that way..."

You grin. Victory. 

"Say it. Say I'm your girlfriend."

Shaw smirks at you. "Make me."

That's her final mistake, because you do make her. Time and again, for many hours. Until finally she stops resisting and just accepts it. 

And you didn't even have to bribe her with a dog.


End file.
